


It should have been me

by superfluouskeys



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/F, Grief/Mourning, Jealousy, Minor Shepard/Liara T'Soni, POV First Person, Pining, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-12-12 04:36:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11729625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superfluouskeys/pseuds/superfluouskeys
Summary: Half-light, half-shadow, let my spirit sleepThey never learnt to love who never knew to weep.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've wanted to write for Ash for a long time, but since I never played ME1 until recently, I felt like I needed more to go on. And apparently I found it bc I felt like writing in first person again. Also apparently I'm very into three-part pieces right now--tentatively, at least.

She came into my life like a demon, or some kind of really fucked up angel.  Definitely glowing, but covered in blood and with the kind of look in her eye that said 'do not fuck with me,' but also 'follow me if you want to live.'

We walked past literal piles of bodies.  My team.  My friends.  People who should have made it, instead of me.  She wasn't here for them, anyway.

I was offered a spot on the Normandy, and what could I do but accept?  A lifetime of shit assignments and now the best ship in the Alliance fleet, some kind of crazy mission against a council Spectre, and on top of all that, serving under a commander who was nothing short of infamous?  My ass would be dead if she hadn't come along, anyway.  Any time after that was extra, and I might as well spend it doing something halfway worthwhile.

The ship was crawling with aliens.  My family wasn't nearly far enough removed from the First Contact War not to see a turian and think about the old joke.  One day, in frustration, I whispered it to the pilot after Vakarian had walked past.

( _psst.  hey, joker._

_yeah, what's up?_

_what do you call it when a turian gets killed by a horrible spikey monster?_

glint of mischief in his eye.  _what?_

 _friendly fire._ )

But she, with the hard set about her jaw and that 'do not fuck with me, follow me to live' look in her eye, put her trust in the aliens.  She took them on missions.  Talked to them, leaned back and relaxed while they spoke, even seemed to enjoy the conversations sometimes.  Allowed the asari to wax breathless at the sight of her, even, without so much as a snide remark.  It was almost too easy to place my trust in her.

My sister teased me about the lieutenant, a good-looking L2 biotic named Kaidan.  I didn't know how to tell her that it wasn't even a little bit like that.  Not because he wasn't a good guy, or because we didn't get along, but because the commander kind of...eclipsed everyone who stood at her side.  Even me, maybe.

But she seemed to enjoy spending time with him well enough.  They talked, I overheard him call her Shepard, and I overheard her allow it, and a weird, horrible kind of jealousy flared up somewhere in my gut, and I didn't have the first idea what I was supposed to make of it.

I watched them, the asari and the human lieutenant, sort of...fight over her, almost, quietly, just under the surface, threatening to boil over, and I watched the Commander remain unnervingly impassive in the face of them both.  I wondered what it said about me that I should even want any kind of attention from someone so cold.  Changed my mind right back again the next time we talked, and there was unmistakeable warmth in her voice, even a little smile in her eyes when she said _dismissed, Chief_.

Figured it didn't really matter when I saw my options rapidly narrowing on Virmire. 

It was a beautiful place.  Vakarian said it reminded him of Palaven (sans the swarm of flashlight-heads), and the thought hung with me while I was holed up with the salarian team.  The salarian commanding officer was down, the geth had us surrounded, I was pretty sure I'd been hit but could barely feel anything, Shepard hadn't checked in on the comm link in way too long, and some idiot part of my brain started to wonder how many beautiful places, places I'd never even dreamed of, had been destroyed by this kind of bullshit.

The Commander's voice came through at last, and while I briefed her I tried to think of anything I needed to sort out in my mind before I died.  _No heroics_ , she'd barked at me before she sent me out, which translated roughly to _don't die_ , but how many more times could a Williams be the only soldier to walk out of a mission alive before we were all just shot on sight?

I'd volunteered because I was ready to die.  I'd always been ready, in a way.  I ejected a thermal clip, reloaded, rolled my shoulders, aimed.

 _And you, my father, there on the sad height,_  
Curse, bless me with your fierce tears, I pray.  
Do not go gentle into that good night.  
Rage, rage against the dying of the--

I was ready, and then I heard orders I didn't understand.  I was ready, and then, "Commander, no!"

"I'm sorry, Kaidan."

"I understand, Commander."

"NO!"

And then suddenly it was over, and I was back on the Normandy, and we were leaving, and there was a horrible, bright light and no sound, and I felt like I was going to faint or be sick or just die right there from the shame.  Words are pouring out unbidden.  Kaidan was a superior officer, I was ready, it should have been me, why, why, why--

But she was always so steady, so sure of herself.  "I had to make a choice," she said, simply, like that was the end of it, and who was I to argue?  I wondered fleetingly if she'd just been born that way, cocksure and swaggering even as a toddler, or if someone like me could learn that kind of confidence, given the time.

Given the time.  Twice now Shepard had bought me more time than I deserved.

Sometime in the aftermath of running off with the best ship in the Alliance fleet, there was this crazy idea forming in my head.  One of those little, nagging things, so bizarre it was almost a nonsequitor, so intrusive I could barely focus on my duties for the evening.  There was this crazy energy buzzing all over the ship, everyone so shocked that we'd pulled it off--that Shepard had pulled it off, everyone ready to throw themselves headfirst at the root of the problem.

I had my hand on the side of the door, not quite leaning, not quite supporting myself, when I saw the asari coming around the corner.  This horrible kind of...panic, almost, shot through me and I immediately headed in the opposite direction.  Of course not.  Of course I shouldn't knock on Shepard's door.  Not now.  Not ever.  The asari held like five doctorates or something, was some kind of expert on Prothean artifacts, went all starry-eyed and breathless when she talked to the Commander, and they talked _all the time_. 

Of course it would be her.  Not me.  Why should it have been me?


	2. Chapter 2

Watching Shepard go down seemed like it should have been a particularly vivid nightmare.  I think I had that one a few times, actually.  Even watching Shepard take a bad hit out in the field was devastating.  On the rare occasion that she went down, no matter the ground team, we always, _always_ had to fall way back until we could get her back on her feet.  This was something else.  Icy and distant and so painful it was hard to breathe.

A couple of the evac shuttles didn't even make it.  The crash was catastrophic.  The Normandy rained down on some unidentifiable planet in shards.  I thought about Kaidan disappearing in a bright white flash and no sound except for my own heart pounding in my ears and wondered if I'd be next.  Sometime after they sent us a rescue, though, the grief set in.  It coursed through the remaining crew in waves, a mournful battle cry, ancient and visceral and terrible.

You know how sometimes you don't even realize how vital something is, how completely integral to your very existence, until it's ripped away from you?

Just like in the field, everything fell apart without her.  Everything she started swept under the rug, the pilot grounded, crew split up and assigned to shit details across the galaxy, told they were lucky they weren't all court-martialed.  Vakarian and the quarian had already gone back to their lives by the time the ship went down, but the asari went down with us.  Took it way harder than I expected, actually.  I mean, weren't they supposed to live for a thousand years or something?  What could human lives mean to them, anyway?

Stupid fucking jealousy hadn't managed to die down yet, even after all that.  Even when it didn't matter anymore.

I took some mandatory leave, but I guess it was good for me.  I got to see my family, eat warm meals, watch TV, check out a giant stack of books from the library, try to keep myself from going crazy, that kind of thing. 

They did all they could for me, or with me, maybe, my dad and my sisters, but I don't think they really had any way of understanding what I was going through.  And what was more, I didn't really want them to.

I had the same nightmare for a month, at least.  Every time it was like some cruel trick of the universe, like it was happening all over again and the other times must have been the nightmares.  Every night the same thing--explosions, everything happening so fast, _where's the commander_ , flying through the stars, equipment failing, body convulsing, farther and farther and farther and then...

I woke up.  Gasping.  Crying.  Choking.  Shaking all over.

 _Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,_ __  
Are heaped for the beloved's bed;  
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,  
Love itself shall slumber on.

I remembered when I heard the story, how Shepard had only just taken command of the ship as a reaction to a desperate situation, and how before that she'd only just been promoted to XO.  Coming in the way I did, it never seemed that way.  From the way she acted to the way the crew reacted to her, even to the way her superiors reacted to her, she always seemed every bit the living legend everyone talked about.

When I was finally deemed sane and healthy enough to return to the Alliance, the first thing they did was ship me off to the Terminus systems.  On the way there I thought about being offered a spot on the Normandy, and how it was by far the best assignment I'd ever received.

Good goddamn thing I took the chance when I had it, I thought now.

Horizon was a tough assignment, and not really in the way you'd think of for a military operation.  People hated me, mistrusted me, blamed me for any little thing that went wrong.  The most neutral among them just simply didn't want me there, didn't want me to be performing the tasks I'd been assigned, and I was inclined to agree with them.

The other stuff in the debriefing, the stuff about Cerberus abductions, seemed completely far-fetched during my first few months there.  The people on Horizon just wanted to go about their business, away from the far-reaching influence of the Alliance, and here I was interfering.  That everything went to shit one day out of nowhere seemed like a coincidence.  Comm tower offline, defense towers malfunctioning as usual, swarms of mutant bug things attacking out of nowhere, colonists denying my help even though they needed it, running, hiding, falling, freezing.

And then there was Commander Shepard, alive, and nothing in the entire universe seemed like a coincidence anymore.

Seeing Shepard again felt like...I don't know how to describe it.  A cruel joke?  A fucking miracle?  A punch to the gut?  A blow to the head?  I was almost smiling, almost crying when I approached, disbelieving, grateful, feeling more whole and more alive and more hopeful than I had in the two years since her death.

"It's good to see you, Ash.  How have you been?"

Seeing Shepard was like a world shattering all over again.

 _That's it?_   Suddenly I was angry, and I didn't know how to explain it.  Of all the emotions I could have, anger didn't make a lot of sense.  _Why didn't you contact me,_ I said?  Probably for a damn good reason, and if not, well then, what did it even matter?

But she was always so steady, so sure.  Not even a flinch when she admitted to working with fucking Cerberus.  _Never thought the heroic alien-lover would join up with the pro-human terrorists_ , I wanted to snap, but didn't--Vakarian and a damned salarian on either side of her.  _You won't listen to reason_ , she said, and I felt ice and fire in my veins in equal measure.

Sometimes people who thought they were all about reason were the last ones to see the truth.  Maybe my life was plagued by self-doubt, but at least that meant I was ready to admit when I might be wrong.  Maybe I was feeling wild and rash and emotional, but maybe that was what made me alive.  Was Shepard ever really alive, if she could always be so stone-faced in the wake of others' emotional reactions to her?

These were all things I thought long afterward, after I'd stormed off with a few terse words and cried in what remained of my room for the better part of an hour before reporting in on the attack.

 _I could really use your help_ , she'd said.  Even after I'd snapped at her, she'd asked me to come along.  And do what?  Throw myself into some unknown abyss like I didn't value the life Shepard had handed to me twice and counting?  Join Cerberus?  Turn traitor on the Alliance and prove once and for all that a Williams' loyalty only went so far?

No.

No.  Two years ago, even a few months ago, I'd have jumped at the chance to follow Shepard into the nearest abyss, but now?  Now I could see clearly what an idiot I'd been before, pining after someone who couldn't return my feelings, who couldn't even feel at all. 

Let her rot with fucking Cerberus and her other blind followers, for all I cared.  Let them all burn at the shrine of Commander Shepard, vying so hard to share some of her light that she eclipsed them entirely.  Let her throw herself into whatever she thought was best and let me have the sense not to get caught in the crossfire this time around.

* * *

The way things played out after that made it feel like Horizon was a test of some kind, and I had passed.  It was a hollow victory at best, but I'd take what I could get.  Suddenly I went from the shittiest of the shit assignments to being up for a promotion.  Suddenly I went from one of Shepard's lackeys to someone of personal interest to the human Councilor Udina. 

No secret Udina was a piece of shit.  He was the kind of flip-floppy politician who changed his entire moral compass on a dime.  One day he could barely remember my name, the next he was trying to tap me for consideration for Spectre training.  (Didn't escape my notice how clearly that was meant to replace the void Shepard had left behind.)  Again, it felt like kind of a hollow victory, and it didn't quite sit right with me, the way it played out, but again, I'd take what I could get in terms of good news.

News of Shepard's super-secret Cerberus mission didn't exactly sound off across the galaxy.  It was more like everyone wanted to share what they knew, but never loud enough for anyone else to hear.  It took a lot of snooping around to piece together the basics: that Shepard and crew had taken the rebuilt Normandy through the Omega-4 Relay, destroyed a Collector base, and lived to tell the tale.  I was on leave when I heard about third-hand that Shepard had basically turned herself into the Alliance, and thanks to a good word from Anderson, the Alliance had very generously placed her under six months' house arrest. 

That day my sister came home to find me sitting cross-legged on the kitchen counter, staring at nothing, and I didn't even know how to explain this new wave of confusion.  It was so weird...I'd spent so little time on the Normandy and yet it felt more like home than most other places I'd been.  I'd spent so little time under Shepard's command--all of us had--and yet it seemed I was one of the few who'd managed to resist that little voice in my head telling me I'd follow her anywhere, trust her with anything.

Shepard had been dead and then she'd been alive, but different, but the same, and now she was under house arrest for doing what she always did: what needed to be done.

That day, and in the weeks that followed, I tried to send her a few e-mails...or maybe more than a few...but none of them went through.  Word was that her communications were heavily monitored and censored, and that no one who'd worked with her before could reach her, with the probable exception of Hackett.

Maybe it's better that most of them didn't go through.  Reading them later, they sounded weird and pleading, bordering on desperate.  When I returned to the Alliance to receive my promotion, I got the harebrained idea more than once to pull what few strings I had access to just to drop everything and go and visit her for a few hours, consequences be damned.  It was what she would have done, to be sure, but I knew in my bones I didn't have the nerve, not to jeopardize my career when things were finally looking up, nor to answer the call in my heart towards this strange, enigmatic person who had a habit of leading her people into impossible situations, and who hadn't always been so skilled at getting them out.

The knowledge that I wouldn't do it, though, wouldn't follow my instincts, didn't sit right with me.  There was attending to your own affairs, and then there was being too much of a coward or too concerned with the wrong things to do something that mattered to you, and I wasn't sure which this was.

I never got to find out, because as it often seemed to do, the entire galaxy went to shit in about twenty-four hours, and suddenly we were being herded onto the Cerberus-rebuilt Normandy (now flying Alliance colours) and instructed to be ready for a hasty exit once we'd picked up the Admiral.

And seeing Shepard again was like drowning, and her face was whole and not all cut up like it had been before, and there was real, heart-wrenching anguish in her eyes when Anderson tossed her dog tags back to her and placed the Normandy back into her hands.

Shepard was quiet, curt with her words, which was as close to distress as I'd ever seen her.  But it seemed that as far as the crew were concerned, she had merely reclaimed her rightful place.


End file.
